Parker's Second Reader eBook

5. Smith had many adventures, after his wound
obliged him to leave Jamestown. He visited this
country again; made a voyage to the Summer Isles;
fought with pirates; joined the French against the
Spaniards; and was adrift, in a little boat, alone,
on the stormy sea, during a night so tempestuous that
thirteen French ships were wrecked, near the Isle
of Re; yet he was saved.

6. He died in London, in 1631, in the fifty-second
year of his age, after having published his singular
adventures in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America.

LESSON LIII.

John Ledyard.—­JUVENILE MISCELLANY.

1. Few men have done so much, in a short life,
as John Ledyard. When he was a mere boy, he built
a canoe with his own hands, and descended Connecticut
river alone and unassisted.

2. He enlisted as a soldier, at Gibraltar; and
afterwards, in the humble character of corporal of
the marines, he sailed round the world with the celebrated
Captain Cook.

3. After his return to England, he formed the
bold design of traversing the northern parts of Europe
and Asia, crossing Behring’s Straits, and examining
the whole of North America, from east to west.

4. Sir Joseph Banks, famous for his generosity
to men of enterprise, furnished him with money for
the undertaking. He expended nearly all of it
in purchasing sea stores; and these, most unluckily,
were all seized by a custom-house officer, on account
of some articles which the English law forbade to
be exported.

5. Poor Ledyard was now left in utter poverty;
but he was a resolute man, and he would not be discouraged.
With only ten guineas in his purse, he attempted to
walk over the greater part of three continents.

6. He walked through Denmark and Sweden, and
attempted to cross the great Gulf of Bothnia, on his
way to Siberia; but when he reached the middle of
that inland sea, he found the water was not frozen,
and he was obliged to foot it back to Stockholm.

7. He then traveled round the head of the gulf,
and descended to St. Petersburg. Here he was
soon discovered to be a man of talents and activity;
and though he was without money, and absolutely destitute
of stockings and shoes, he was treated with great
attention.

8. The Portuguese ambassador invited him to dine,
and was so much pleased with him, that he used his
influence to obtain for him a free passage in the
government wagons, then going to Irkutsk, in Siberia,
at the command of the Empress Katharine.

9. He went from this place to Yakutz, and there
awaited the opening of the spring, full of the animating
hope of soon completing his wearisome journey.
But misfortune seemed to follow him wherever he went.

10. The empress could not believe that any man
in his senses was traveling through the ice and snows
of uncivilized Siberia, merely for the sake of seeing
the country and the people.